Site Discussions

I remember puff ball mushrooms from the lush woods near Grayling MI.
♥️

I have a 262 year old beech tree that centers my wrap-around driveway and as of 2.5 years ago the once beautiful tree that has seen generations upon generations of lives and the worlds they lived in is now rapidly dying. I had it treated and it didn’t seem to slow down a bit. This whole house is built around this tree, it’s devastating.

Extremely well written. Thank you for the vision of the stream. I have had similar epiphanies, but never have been able to capture it so well.

Bill, thank you for all this important hard work you are doing, creating such positive impact!  Organizing, communicating, educating, getting people involved, helping us care—this is what we need to save and preserve our beautiful Earth.

Thank you for this fascinating, engaging and beautifully written article. I have often seen this phone and wondered what in the world it was, and now I know.  I bet you are a great teacher, your students are fortunate!

Thanks Susan for a thoughtful and informative article regarding spotted turtles. My one and only encounter of this species is a rather odd tale. At our home in Massachusetts while doing yard work, I spotted a spotted turtle as it had just crossed a busy county road and crawled its way onto my yard nearly avoiding the street drain. It appeared to have come from the direction where several ponds and wetlands occur or was heading across my yard to reach a series of wetlands behind our house. I considered myself thoroughly lucky to have seen it that day. They are beautiful creatures.

Thanks for sharing this experience, Timothy!

I have had Lyme 2x within a year. There was no evidence of a tick bite. I knew something was not right. Fatigue, joint aches, upset stomach. Does the virus remain in the body forever, then manifests itself when the immune system is low? Confusing.

Susan,

Great article!

I saw my first Yellow-spotted Turtle many years ago while I was certifying a couple vernal pools in Central MA. Knee-deep in water and searching for Wood Frog eggs in the flooded blueberry bushes of the pool, I saw a Yellow-spotted Turtle swimming toward me. I stood perfectly still and the turtle almost bumped into my waders. It was a magical moment being so close to this threatened species which was unaware of my presence. Eventually it swam off to another part of the vernal pool.

All I have left of that encounter is the memory as my camera was about fifteen feet behind me on the shore!

Please include in my previous comment that we live close to the Ohio river in Cincinnati. We love watching these hawks.

We’ve had a pair of Northern Harrier hawks in our suburban backyard for several years. One landed on the rail of our deck several days ago. My husband took some pictures of it. After comparing the tail to online photos, I realized it was a harrier.

I have gray squirrels and white squirrels. Botflys seem to prefer the greys! And some years they don’t bother the squirrels.

I was talking to some of the Mass Audubon people in charge of monitoring these fields and they said that they just counted 45 male and 59 female bobolinks!  Some of those birds had been displaced by mowing in unmanaged, adjacent fields, but there were an estimated 30-40 pairs of bobolinks nesting in the managed fields this year.

I have definitely seen the cellar spider-mom with her little babes nearby! At first I thought they were the remains of gnats or something, but upon closer inspection, determined that they were tiny spiders, hanging upside-down just like mom. I very gently re-homed them. I enjoy spider-watching quite a bit.

Do Mockingbirds in different states only learn what bird species that are within that area?

“empty nymph exoskeletons . . . can be can gently unhooked from the bark, and gently (and stealthily) attached to a brother or sister’s clothing.”  Thanks for the laugh!

@Shawn: I had a overgrown hedge at the back of my property. Same problem. I cut it down about a foot off the ground and it grew right back (Much fuller than it had been). Now it just cut it down every year to a height I can keep it trimmed down to.

Wonderful article! Thank you! Superb illustration too.

Thanks for this article! I have always enjoyed the mockingbirds’ repertoire in an urban environment.

Proves the old adage: when you want something done ask a busy person.